Is Boundless A Universe? Should it be?

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OK so I made a comment in the announcements thread, and it’s conducive to some discussion. And I’m off work today so look at that.

We talk a lot about “the boundless universe”. Most of us think this is the game. But really, it’s not. It’s a construct of a couple of things, and mostly then a matter of player engagement.

It took some time for me to get it beaten into my head that Boundless, the product, is not actually any sort of universe. It’s a world. And that’s it. Copies of a world stamped over and over. The only thing added by the devs to make the public worlds feel like a “universe” is the distance map to imply some physical relationship. In the end, it’s a world server, with a couple of clients available.

Now some could say that’s enough to make it “a universe” and some could say it’s not. Technically, as we see, some community interaction, a few player constructs, and it functions well enough, at a basic level. But in terms of social engagement, community building, blah blah blah it’s a giant treasure trove of missed opportunity.

As I stated in another thread, It’s important to choose a direction. It becomes clear in any conversation that many people who have fallen in love with this MMO over the years don’t realize how the game is structured for (and has built towards) a ‘universe’ of small, but independent worlds.

The private world/universe engine is (largely) in place and with expectations managed correctly can be a tool for massive growth, in terms of players using the software and financial success for the company if handled right.

The MMO universe can be enhanced, grown in many ways also. Knitting it into a more engaging universe is the thing that’s more interesting to me. The persistent MMO universe is what I came for. And while there are some simple things that can be done to leverage the existing tech into a much more engaging universe, this is also a much harder path for long term growth and development, IMO.

I mean in the end the post may seem sort of vague but it’s intended as stimulus. Right now it sounds like there’s a reasonable plan on the table and it’s, well, reasonably vague. That’s the correct space for things to be in I think. It’s not time to rebalance the forge, or chase the minor irritations of the entrenched community, really.

It’s time to pick a direction, and then it will be time to build a team that actively supports growth in that direction. I do hope an early phase of that is the release of the existing, updated code base. But honestly if that (private universes and eventually a sort of mine-craft-y community) isn’t where Monumental wants to go, who knows what could happen.

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I See MajorVex replying here, I literally have your entire post quoted from the other thread on my clipboard, as a good direction for discussion.

I’m following up to this, as well as my OP here.

EDIT: also making coffee though :smile:

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Same here. :+1: Otherwise, I’d just play Minecraft.

I think adding rental planets was beneficial for the game, if you zoom out and look at the big picture. I do hope they plan to focus on the Known Worlds, since that’s where the NPE begins. Perhaps adding new biomes, new events, temples and things that give players a reason to visit and participate.

I don’t know which direction they plan to take things, but I think a dev-designed Town Center should be made available somewhere, if not on each perm planet.

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Yes and yes.

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There’s obviously a lot to figure out here but a persistent, shared universe should be a central pillar of the game.

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Ditto. Succinct and to the point.

But what’s your definition of “persistent”?

Like do you just want a lively population base? Or a lively population that interacts with each other? (because right now, everything is soloable which doesn’t necessitate the need for alot of interaction or inter-dependency with others)

Or the ability to change the universe with your actions?

Or something else?

I personally miss the days when I had neighbors and we’d interact with each other. That interaction could be a conflict that had to be resolved if we were building too close to each other, the need to use each other’s portal, or a trade of goods and resources.

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So, we have the 50 worlds. I think the current connection cap is 85 players. It’s been 100 or more, at times. This gives us the math of 4250 max concurrent players I mention. If I’m off on the current cap it doesn’t change that number, much.

We’re getting to automatic world generation here …

Right now you pick a region and spawn into the existing, public universe. Obviously but it means you’re connected to things and this is important.

Even with the known caveats about the early access phases and trophies, the numbers on achievements like “made it out of the sanctum” are very telling. “Made it to level 10” :rofl:

We have to remember that every player has to get through it, and then we have to remember that the system works hard to spread out the new players. The idea of new planets popping up as needed does actually not support any sort of smooth integration with “the universe” and while some players will still get plopped next to a major city, the very next player might get started on a bare-ass new world.

Without any doubt, managing expectations here is mega-critical. If Boundless is about the universe, then something like the tutorial planet, some interactive plotting stuff, and some sort of early engagement is critical. Also auto-popping new planets based on a single threshold, or simple matrix, is not a good idea for a ton of reasons.

Also if this is “the way” then there are definitely some layers that can be added to make social integration, and engagement with the universe into a very powerful resource. But if the team behind the game doesn’t want to develop and maintain those sort of layers then focusing the onboarding towards “owning your own universe” and linking up private servers has a different sort of thrust.

And that’s reflected in both how you present the ecosystem, and the in-game NPE.

@monty1 thanks for the remarks and I so much agree that it should be. It is right now and I appreciate the things you’ve said so far regarding your planned methodology for transitioning towards maintenance, then growth. Options, So many options … :grinning:

Right now it’s great to get some rope. Also, a lot of posts right now I’m catching up.

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I believe that automatic world generation has been in place for a long time (I will confirm next week as we kick off the transition). I believe that if I added 10,000 new installs today, many new - and permanent - worlds would automatically spin up to support those new players.

Instantly, the universe would change to distribute and support the new population of concurrent players.

The stickier issue is that there’s no process (automated or otherwise) to decommission an abandoned main world, so the new worlds (and associated servers) would be persistent.

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So, pros and cons of a system that auto-generates new worlds based on <threshold>

PROS:

  • unlimited growth
  • instant response to any viral surge, etc …
  • new players see open spaces

CONS

  • lost/missing NPE (There’s nothing I saw in the videos)
  • unbridled growth of stale worlds

Yes on that one. So a new player comes on, falls in love, throws a couple hundred bucks at gleam club, has a baby, and loses interest in the only beacon on a world that spawned the day they started. Literally nobody even goes there except an occasional miner but it’s locked in now for say 5 years must be maintained.

This is bad, right? “free weekend” surge or F2P release and 30 worlds auto-pop on a little surge so the result is a hugely random flood of experience/feedback - and now the monthly maintenance cost of the game as a whole is doubled? Please I’m not trying to be specific on a number or percent, could be 10% - still is that a permanent cost?

I’m not trying to get a specific answer, just make the point that “worlds can be auto-generated” is not an answer to the question of capacity. If someone comes from a PixelatedTwix video and gets spawned onto a world that was generated three hours ago … are they done already?

I’m pretty sure this is off. I’ll dig around someone commented on the state of these system in the last year or so maybe. It does exist though.

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Automatic generation of new, permanent worlds based on player population was how it used to work in EA and I don’t think they changed it with 1.0 and beyond. In fact, I specifically remember very early on being part of “world generation parties” (not any kind of official name there) where we would put the max of 150 players on a planet in, say, US East and then have a bunch of people go to a portal to that planet and try and use it (they would be blocked from doing so) which would kick off the world generation tech. I don’t remember the exact specifics though :frowning:

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I believe that is completely accurate. If we added 10,000 new installs today, I suspect it would spin up another 50 core worlds and instantly double the persistent cost of those servers.

I could be wrong (I often am) but being able to better control the elasticity of the universe is going to be an important thing to solve before we start adding tons of new players.

I mentioned that James was very patient with my exhaustive bad ideas. One of the ideas that I want to explore is making the sanctum a small “pocket world” that helps the player learn the game before taking that first big step into the shared universe.

With some thought – and careful design – we could also soften some of the more difficult concepts for new players (e.g., beacons, plots, block regeneration, etc.).

But it’s all speculation until we really get immersed in the technology and design of Boundless.

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It’s a struggle chasing old posts on this forum, too.

The numbers got somewhat secretive by the time I came along, but this and other reasons are why a system like this can’t just sit on all the time, waiting to be trolled. At a minimum, it needs a more complex threshold/metric. I’m trying to find a dev (I would have thought James) posting on the current state of these systems but you basically have to know who said something and when to find it here :frowning:

In terms of the game’s future development though, the current position of the switches is not that important, really.

For sure if such a system is live, it needs an approved method for some sort of “shrinkage” to occur. In my opinion.

I’m eiditing as I catch up, I still have the last post here lol.

This is honestly a great idea. And it can be used to help resolve some other issues as well - regarding those who try to start with private universes especially. I think @majorvex and some others are working on a sort of player-created version of this, but of course it means a new player in game would have to know about it, and get to it.

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This is a really challenging problem to solve for obvious reasons but I do think two possible things coming together could get us close to solving it:

  1. Analysis of the data around the known public (non-sovereign) universe such as average daily population per world, # of plots per world, etc, partnered with a documented, shared plan of action for said worlds should they fall under a given threshold.
  2. A blueprinting system (a’la Creativerse) where players can create a blueprint of something they’ve built and somewhat easily recreate it somewhere else or even sell the blueprint to other players.
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I love the blue printing system. It was one of the first things that James and I talked about. The devs had some amazing ideas (that we hope to implement).

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I love this. It would be especially cool if it could be considered in-universe so we could bring things in and out and have our own little portable home. Maybe restrict storage or machines or something, but thinking about it, that could even alleviate the issues with storage space on hunts, too. I know this would cause issues with the way Sanctum is stored, but ideas are ideas :man_shrugging:

Some kind of in-game broadcast warning about this would be a very important part of this plan of action.

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First of all yes blueprints!!

Also real-time engagement with … persons of interest … is invigorating, thanks for the interest.

I definitely think that any point I’m raising here is addressable and understanding things are currently at a high level, I appreciate hearing some practical remarks with what I consider to be a direction supportive of my interests in the game.

I do think that the private worlds are important. For the growth of the game as well as the people who maintain it. For me it’s not the most attractive part of the game but it seems like the voxel component leads to some pretty consistent comparisons with minecraft and the like, and thus their models for success.

There are people trying to engage with the MMO, and attract attention to it. However a lot of what has gone on in the past couple of years has really throttled any growth there.

I’m getting progressively more excited :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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I do think that the private worlds are important. For the growth of the game as well as the people who maintain it.

You know, this got me thinking: If you offered AWS-based hosting for private worlds to players at some cost right from the Boundless shop, it would technically be feasible then for private world owners to optionally set up portals between their private world and the MMO universe.

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Huge :+1::+1::+1:on both the pocket universe idea, and blueprints!! :slight_smile:

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There are some simple things that could be done to add massively to engagement, and to outreach.

The benefit of producing something like BUTT in-house could be significant in maintaining and encouraging player engagement with the ecosystem, overall. Both in and out of world. Adding this as a service layer and moving the way the APIs are exposed would open up an impressive level of integration for casual developers and enthusiasts, as well. Without changing the world server.

MMMmmmmmmmm readily accessible AJAX shop data APIs, anyone?

Got some time to play with the planet server? Tuck in some more data APIs. I’ve never posted this here since development in these areas went, for me, in a completely unexpected direction. But hey, give us simple, actual “universe level” data feeds please.

I want to see a regional weather API for boundless. :man_shrugging: Silly? Maybe not.

Yes and then imagine stuff like social plugins that can make status info say, the weather at your build. Nice web links to your shop stock. Etcetera …

There’s a lot that can be done to make the ecosystem accessible, and still include both hosted and fully private worlds. Accessible, and also inviting.

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Of course Boundless is a universe! Persistent and shared, and this is a huge selling point for me, especially as a PlayStation player.

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